


A Map With Your Name For A Capital

by trajectory



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Background Canon-Typical Misery, Class Issues, Developing Relationship, Idealism, M/M, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22300846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trajectory/pseuds/trajectory
Summary: Jet meets beastformer, beastformer meets jet.
Relationships: Horri-Bull/Needlenose
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	A Map With Your Name For A Capital

**Author's Note:**

> Set on Cybertron before the war, and before Tracks’ and Needlenose’ relationship really started unravelling. 
> 
> A thank you goes out to my beta reader for her help here! Along with the above tags, this story makes references to Functionism and people not realizing how wrong their revolution will go in the future. The non-IDW characters present (or mentioned) in it are obscure canon characters borrowed from other TFs continuities. They aren’t OCs.

The unlicensed fuel depot six blocks away from the exhibition site was crowded with moving bodies. They flowed around the circular tables, each table lit with a blocky light fixture in the center that only pulsed a dim (if cheerful) yellow during the daylight hours. Sunlight winked off the tall glass windows set into hexagon-shaped openings. Needlenose squeezed through the masses swirling under the domed ceiling and grabbed the first open seat with some wing space to spare that he spotted, even if it was right next to a boisterous cluster of industrial workers who occupied the rest of the table’s seats, their manual labor frames still dirty and the dull finish of their low-end paint still chipped from a day’s hard work. At the rich scent of fuel wafting through the air, Needlenose’s tanks gurgled hungrily. They were keen to send notifications to him that they were edging towards empty, after the busy day and his midnoon flight. As long as Needlenose didn’t bother his neighbors at the table, they wouldn’t bother him. He was going to fuel and have a drink or two so he would be refreshed when he took back to the sky.

But by the time his fuel order arrived and he was pouring the mineral-heavy supplements into his drink, a couple of the mechs had started jostling each other and throwing him strange looks.

Huh.

Needlenose didn’t get it so he shrugged them off.

He shifted open the hatch in his mask to pop his straw into, and kept editing the data-flow graph he had laid out on the datapad, lifting a block and placing it somewhere new, tweaking the outlines here and there.

His newest set of chips were part of the rotating display he was presenting at the exhibition, but inspiration had bitten him for how to rearrange the integrated micro-circuits around the transmission modules to improve upon the uniform effectivity of the electricity moving through the power-structure, therefore optimizing the signal integrity throughout the chip. That would leave room for more coding libraries to be routed without adding any new physical components, lowering the manufacturing costs for the shop and enhancing the hardlight performance. Needlenose wanted to write down as much of the new idea as he could before it slipped away from him.

One of the industrial workers sitting next to him leaned over the table, planting a large hand on the surface, and said:

“Hey, you. You one of those designer types from out of town?”

Having become absorbed in his sketching, Needlenose jerked at the interruption, swallowing a squeak, stylus and datapad nearly slipping out of his grip before he caught it and stopped it from cracking onto the table.

Needlenose looked over at the speaker.

Then Needlenose had to tip his helm _back_ so he could see the speaker’s face and not just be staring like an idiot at his broad chest. It was a big mech who was asking, with sharp horns that protruded from the kibble mounted on his back. Even sitting down, he towered over Needlenose by a sizable margin. Branded onto the yellow and grey plating of a shoulder was a purple symbol Needlenose didn’t recognize.

“Uh. What do you mean?” Needlenose replied.

The yellow mech snorted air through the ventilation slots in his mask.

“ _Are_ you one of the designers who are showing their work in that fancyaft hall? The scribbles on that ‘pad you got there look like blueprints for the kind of scrap they’re strutting off to me,” he rumbled, his voice deep and low, and added. “I haven’t seen ya’ around here before either. Visiting town for the big exhibition they’re holdin’ in it?”

“ _No_. It’s not ‘scrap,’ don’t call it that.” Needlenose said hotly without a second’s thought, then amended his words as the rest of the sentence sank in. “I mean, yes. Yes, I’m a designer, my art _did_ qualify to present at the exhibition and I assure you it’s quite finely crafted, but no, I’m not just _visiting_ —I live here! I’m not… some sightseer!” His wings flicked up indignantly. “You probably didn’t notice me around here before because I don’t come to this sector of Rodion often! That’s _all_.”

The yellow mech pulled his hand back to his side. Red optics scanned him up and down. “Probably. You’re too shiny. You’d get robbed.”

Needlenose didn’t hide his annoyance at how rude this mech was being.

“Excuse me!”

One of the other workers made a hushed joke that made the other three mechs laugh. Needlenose raised an optical ridge at them.

“He wouldn’t get robbed _now_.” The worker who’d made the joke—a small, dark forklift with a look in his golden optical band like he was itching to run his mouth and not all of what would come out of it would be pleasant—threw in from behind the yellow mech’s shoulder. A long streak of grease was smudged across the forklife’s arm. “We had to knock down a lot of the filthier places to make room for the pavilions, and the construction site took out four of the housing blocks from the old district. That chased out a lot of the criminals and Empties and filchers.” He took a swallow from his drink. His scratchy tone turned mocking, like oil sluicing down a tarred-up drainage pipe. “It’s _safe_ now. Can’t have the stink of the lower classes cluttering up the place where the rich folk from the capital can see it unless they’re bent down doing work like good little cogs in the machine!”

The yellow mech rolled his optics. “Slag off, Kreb. I wasn’t fragging talkin’ to you.”

Craning his neck, Kreb ignored him and told Needlenose, “We built that exhibition site, you see. Not that a bunch of dirty ‘bots like us will ever get to see the inside of what we built now that the job’s finished.”

“I said, you’re not the one I’m talkin’ to here!”

Ire reflecting through his electromagnetic field, the yellow mech twisted around and gave him a hard shove. There was a _clang_. In return Kreb had kicked him under the table before shrugging and returning to the conversation he’d been having with the other workers, who weren’t interested in chiming in. The yellow mech faced Needlenose again.

Aha.

“Is that why you asked me if I was one of the designers exhibiting in it?” Needlenose asked.

“Yeah,” the other mech told him, propping an elbow onto the table. “The architect was my boss bot. Hightower. Not that he got any _real_ credit. But the curator’s this mech named Decanus, have you met ‘im?” Needlenose paused. He put the datapad and his stylus down. He and Tracks had met the curator, but Tracks had handled most of the verbal maneuvering and the meeting had been a lukewarm sort of cordial.

“Briefly.”

“Hightower said Decanus was only admitting designers whose patrons were from the upper crust. The elites. Mechs who coulda’ afford it. I saw you, but I couldn’t figure out why _your_ sort would be in this fuel depot.”

Needlenose sat straight up and folded his arms across his chassis. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m not _Decanus’_ sort. I’m not from the upper classes.” He’d stopped by this fuel depot not to play the tourist he wasn’t, but because he had gone for a flight to stretch his wings and enjoy the warm breeze brushing over his ailerons and this had been the closest fuelling place when his flight engines started running on empty. It was a choice made by the virtue of proximity.

The yellow mech’s brow furrowed. “Then how’d you get into the exhibition?”

Needlenose plunged into setting the record straight.

“My brother and I are starting up a new business in the upper shopping district. He’s taking care of the marketing, I make the chips we sell.” Getting into the intercity exhibition being jointly run by groups from Iacon, Triax, and Rodion was going to be one of the big breaks they _needed_ to get their new shared business out there and attract more customers to the front doors, both of them had agreed. If everything came together, they would be one step closer to their goal of moving to the capital and opening up a shop there one day.

He shifted his weight in his seat. “Decanus is….” They had no sponsor. “We’d paid the application fee and then some extra to get a meeting with him so he would look it over. My brother is really good at talking people around, even if we don’t have much to our name yet. He convinced him the local entrepreneurs were worth showing his support to.”

Decanus hadn’t _looked_ at the art Needlenose had submitted very long, but the curator had taken a second look after Tracks had made frequent mentions of how once sales had taken off, they would remember mechs like Decanus who had been smart enough to see the brothers’ potential and given them an opportunity.

“Your brother ‘convinced’ him, huh?” he said. “Ya’ mean, since you’re _not_ raking it in, Decanus made you guys suck up to him big time before he bothered with your submission?”

Needlenose floundered. “That’s not—”

“I ain’t wrong about it being something like that, am I?”

Needlenose’s protest seemed to die in his vocalizer. The way the other mech was describing it only stung because he was right.

“... You’re not.”

And to Needlenose’s surprise, the yellow mech offered gruff sympathy instead of belittlement. He shook his helm. “That’s a load of slag,” he remarked. “If it’s an exhibition about showing off your designs, you oughta’ be judged on how well you make your scrap, not many credits you got in your bank account or how much Decanus likes you.”

As Needlenose nursed his cube, he muttered. “You’ve got a good point.”

Needlenose had never really thought about the rules they had tripped over and all the hoops and small fees that he and Tracks had to jump through to get a foot in the door while the designers with upper class sponsors from Iacon or Triax had sailed right through in that light.

In truth, he had been deeply _grateful_ Decanus had listened at all, thanks to Tracks’ quick wits when his brother had noticed the curator had been more keen to go back to shuffling through his datapads rather than continue with their meeting. There was a hard limit on how many designers could make it into the exhibition. He had thought at the time, of course, Decanus would favor applications from experienced, successful designers who had gone to the right schools or came from the right class or knew the right mechs, with well-cultured patrons who knew good from bad design, over novices from Rodion who had only been forged three thousand years ago and only exhibited at local art shows. (And the reason he could exhibit at the art shows was because they had applied for a government license to authorize him to create instead of just transport. Fliers weren’t a part of the artisan class. The license was not optional if Needlenose wanted to display his artwork legally, under his own designation.) Needlenose wasn’t the only such ‘novice’ filling out the ranks in the exhibition, but he hadn’t talked much to any of the others.

But... it _was_ kinda slagged up that Decanus had asked after Needlenose’s status before he gave his art a second glance.

Then the jet frowned behind his mask. “Don’t call designs scrap.”

“It’s just about making things look good so people will buy it. Why shouldn’t I?”

Needlenose leaned forward. “You’re thinking about advertising. That’s only one way it’s used. Design isn’t about.... what’s the coolest or the shiniest on the market, It’s not just about pandering to commercial products.” Needlenose’s words were delivered with real passion he didn’t downplay. “Design’s _art_. It’s important. Everything that’s successful needs the right style if you want it to be used the right way! Everything needs design! Design is a way of changing the world, of making things better for _everybody_.”

And that caught the other mech’s attention. He sat up straighter, the crimson glow in his optics brightening.

“Is that’s something you’re for? Making the status quo better for everybody?”

Needlenose nodded eagerly. “Yes! Design should be,” He hesitated and snapped his fingers together, hastily rummaging through his memory banks to find what he had written out for his submission to the exhibition. “About improving things. Brightening up people’s lives.”

For the first time, the yellow mech seemed impressed. Something about his approval warmed Needlenose’s spark in an odd way.

“Huh! ‘M still not convinced design’s all that important, mech, but I like your attitude—”

“Needlenose,” he interrupted.

“—and I like you want to _do_ something with what you make. Needlenose,” he added.

Somehow, that the other mech hadn’t immediately changed his mind on the importance of design was more heartening than if he had right away. Because he hadn’t ended the conversation or changed the subject. That meant the big guy wasn’t easy to convince, but he was giving Needlenose the opening to change his opinion on it. That meant the other mech was taking Needlenose _seriously_.

“If you’re not convinced, why don’t you come to the exhibition and see for yourself? It’s where the best in the city will be hosting their design displays,” Needlenose suggested, seizing the opening. “The designs are there for everybody to see, including the public.”

The yellow mech grumbled.

“Even if I decided to spend my one free day this week on that, I can’t afford to pay both the transit ticket and the entry charge to see a buncha’ trinkets put in a spotlight.”

“Oh.” Needlenose fell quiet, fiddling with the straw in his half-full cube.

And now that Needlenose was thinking about it, it wasn’t likely the other mech lived in this specific sector of Rodion’s districts, even if he had found work as a laborer here. Long commutes were common for the lower classes. Judging by his visible kibble, he was a ground-bound beastformer which meant if he wanted to travel long distances fast across Rodion, he couldn’t fly or drive unless he asked a friend to give him a ride or took the transit rail-line.

Then an idea struck. Needlenose perked up.

“Your friend, Kreb—”

“Co-worker, not friend, really.”

Needlenose huffed. “Your co-worker, mentioned you don’t get to see the place you built in operation. Come on. Don’t you want to anyway?” Keeping his chin tipped up so he could meet his gaze, he locked his optics onto the other mech’s face. “You could come as my guest,” Needlenose startled himself with the offer. “All designers are allowed to bring one guest free of charge, even if they’re not helping with the display.”

The yellow mech gave him a squinted, downright incredulous look for a long moment before his expression cleared up.

“You’re _weird_.” The other mech declared, without anything approaching tact. “You wanna convince me _that_ bad that what you make is cool?”

And to Needlenose’s further surprise at how simply his overture had been received, the other mech rolled with it without a fuss. From all appearances, the other mech wasn’t somebody who cared about overthinking his actions. “Alright. I’ll show. It’d slag off that junkheap curator, if he saw. I’m all for that. Where and when do you want me to meet you?”

Needlenose’s expression was plainly tentative for a sparkbeat, his plating squeezing a little bit closer to his protoform before he caught himself. He puffed his plating outward to project confidence.

“When is your next day off?”

“In three days.”

Needlenose rubbed his chin, blue optics scrunching up.

“My display’s in the Rodion pavilion,” he said. “Could you wait by the western entryway to the site? It’s close by. I’ll be there in the morning.” Needlenose searched his files, folded up the relevant information into a hurriedly-assembled packet and pinged it to him as a data transmission. “Here’s the earliest time the exhibition opens to the public. I make sure to get there early to get my display prepared for the day. If you come then, at that time, I’ll be there.” He couldn’t help, but jitter inwardly, stewing with nerves until the answering ping bounced back, confirming the other mech had received and downloaded the transmission. Needlenose relaxed at that.

“I can do that, easy,” the other mech said.

Needlenose drained the last of his drink, put the empty cube down on the tray, and stood up. He reset his vocalizer with a click.

“You already know my name. What’s yours?”

The other mech’s gaze lingered over him. A buzz of static prickled hotly down Needlenose’s spinal strut.

“I’m Horri-Bull.”

“See you there, then.”

“Likewise.”

Needlenose felt Horri-Bull’s gaze boring into his back until the crowds blocked him from view.

**////**

Needlenose fretted and second-guessed his invitation all three of the days leading up to the date the other mech was supposed to meet up with him. Uncertainty was like a malfunctioning glitchmouse chewing on his wires.

Needlenose berated himself for not getting Horri-Bull’s contact information: he couldn’t call him over the network to see if Horri-Bull was _actually_ going to follow up on his agreement after all, couldn’t check if something unexpected had come up and they might need to reschedule, couldn’t even give himself or Horri-Bull the socially polite excuse of citing some prior pressing engagement that couldn’t postponed to escape the unpleasant experience of having to spend hours walking around with a brazen passerby he’d met at a fuel depot.

Maybe Horri-Bull had just _said_ he’d show up to get Needlenose off his case.

Or maybe he’d agreed to show up and intended to do so, but Horri-Bull was so busy doing— doing... whatever it was that workers did for fun during their down time these days, hanging out with other mechs—that Horri-Bull had clean forgotten about Needlenose the moment Needlenose was out of his sight.

He had other friends sitting with him at that table days ago. Why waste one of an industrial worker’s rare free days on a stranger he’d crossed paths with by a stroke of luck when he could be kicking back with them?

Strangely, Needlenose didn’t fully know why he was invested in meeting Horri-Bull again.

Sure, some of the things he’d said about facts Needlenose had not once questioned or given five seconds of thought to… About Decanus, and the workers, and the buildings Kreb said they’d knocked down to make room for the exhibition that was his and Tracks’ big break… Was it fair that the mechs who had been living there before had lost their homes to a structure that would be torn down before the year was out? Was Needlenose profiting from their loss?

Surely the exhibition sponsors hadn’t turned them out into the cold. Even if they were Empties and filchers. That wouldn’t be right.

Yet how Decanus had treated him and Tracks’ meeting had lost the air of cordial but distant friendliness Needlenose had assigned it in his memory files.

Had Decanus _actually_ been so swamped with the busywork of his position he hadn’t been able to give Needlenose’s art the in-depth examination the website had promised to those who paid the extra fee for a personal meeting while the applications were still being freshly processed? Or had he kept flipping through datapads on his desk because he was bored with the PR necessities of humoring a pair of unremarkable mechs with no connections to their name while harboring no intention of helping them make their case?

The questions were sticking in the back of Needlenose’s mind like they were magnetized there and refusing to budge. It itched. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with them.

That had to be why he wanted to talk with Horri-Bull again.

One more conversation at least.

Nothing big.

That’d be all Needlenose needed to sort this out. The lingering confusion would be dealt with and he would be able to center himself again.

The morning sun rose. Needlenose rose with it. Rubbing sleep out of his optics, he wandered down the hallway, stopping to punch in the door code and peek his helm into his brother’s berthroom.

Tracks’ glossy dark blue form was still deep in recharge on his slab by the circular window, white spoilers sprayed out and his biolights pulsing in the slow, rhythmic patterns of deep defragment. One of his arms dangled off the edge, a comm device lying askew on the floor nearby. He must have drifted off texting Blaster or that war veteran friend of Blaster’s _again_. A social mech, that was his spark brother.

A used cleaning cloth was draped across the back of a chair and a detergent canister was abandoned at the foot of the recharge slab. The rest of Tracks’ various belongings were not so sloppily scattered. One of the shelves set into the wall housed the neat rows of bottles of polish, wax tubes, a buffer, brushes, oils, detailing tools, a handheld mirror, and paint cans. A ferrofluid lamp glowed electric blue atop the computer terminal taking up a corner. Needlenose had given it to him two centuries ago as a present to celebrate the day their sparks had been harvested from the hot spot. Racing posters dotted one wall. Under the posters, a side cabinet was where Tracks kept more canisters and thick data storage blocks. (Rented from the local hall of records so Tracks could study up on business contracts.)

Assured Tracks was where their bond said he should be, Needlenose shut the door and went to scrounge around in the cooking area.

After detouring to meet up with Sunbeam and head to the exhibition site together, Needlenose set up the display’s newest arrangement of chips. He cycled through which displays were selected to be placed in the booth’s spotlight each week. The miniature scale models of his interior room designs (complete with small furniture and functioning light fixtures and movable bridges) had been at the fore for the past week. Now it was time to replace them with the Chic Chips sets and move the interior models to the sidelines. Next week, Needlenose would switch the Chic Chips out for his poster designs, leaving the chips to join the interior models on the sidelines. It was a simple rotation.

Sunbeam was in the back of the display, repairing two burnt-out wires in the portable power cell. Needlenose could see only half of his small frame poking out, the rest of him shoved up into the open maintenance hatch. A toolbox sat by Sunbeam’s knee, a swarm of red stickers covering the handle. Needlenose fussed with the chip arrangements. He adjusted the lighting. Moved the holographic labels around. Put the stacks of business cards Tracks had come up with on the left corner of one of the side tables.

He stepped back to re-evaluate them.

Needlenose moved them to the right corner.

He stepped back and tapped a foot, brow furrowed and lips pursed under his mask.

Then Needlenose put them back into the left corner.

(Needlenose avoided admitting the closer the scheduled time drew, the harder he procrastinated with aimless nitpicking to keep his mind busy.)

By the time the jet headed towards the entranceway, Needlenose was armed with his internal preparations to not be upset if he found nobody besides the exhibition’s security drones standing at the meeting spot. It had been an impulse invitation. Nothing major would be lost if the mech changed his mind about it. He was sternly coaching himself against feeling any disappointment—when he rounded a corner and saw a purple, grey, and white mech he didn’t recognize and Horri-Bull’s hulking form loitering outside the exhibition’s entrywall.

Relief happily blotted out pre-prepared cynicism.

He jogged towards them. Spotting Needlenose before Horri-Bull did, the purple mech barked a laugh like he had a chest full of gravel and elbowed Horri-Bull hard. “I’m shocked! There’s that mech ‘ya talked about. He came. He wasn’t messing with you for cheap kicks after all!”

Horri-Bull whirled around.

“Needlenose!” Horri-Bull called with a note of recognition in his tone, then fixed a sneer at the other mech. “Can it, Apeface, or I’ll turn you into a grease smear on the asphalt.”

“As if you could, loser.”

“Of course I came. I’m a mech of my word, big guy,” Needlenose puffed out his chest and preened. “Good morning!”

“Oh.” Distracted from glaring at Apeface, Horri-Bull reset his optics. He grunted. “Mornin’...”

“Great weather today for a tour,” Apeface said.

Needlenose clapped his hands and glanced awkwardly at Apeface, then at Horri-Bull, then at Apeface again. Apeface seemed to be surpressing thinly-veiled mirth. “Uh. I, I only set up the ID card code for one guest… Do you—”

It occurred to Needlenose that the purple symbol emblazoned across Apeface’s chest plating wasn’t merely a random marking. It was identical to the purple symbol on Horri-Bull’s shoulder. Were they members of the same group or something?

Did Horri-Bull expect Needlenose to let his companion into the exhibition just because of that?

Scratching a finger on his smooth white mask, Apeface snorted. “Oh. No, no. Nah. I’m good. _Horri-Bull_ ’s the curious one here,” Horri-Bull bristled and growled his engine at him for that comment. “I got no interest in a sightseeing tour. I just came along to laugh at him when you didn’t show, but turns out I’m outta luck there. Later.”

Apeface transformed into an odd four-limbed techanimal mode and lopped off.

Wings sagging downwards before quivering in telltale twitches of confusion, Needlenose glanced at Horri-Bull. “Who was—?”

Horri-Bull’s gaze belatedly flickered from Needlenose’s twitching wings to his face.

“One of the ‘bots from my housing place. Forget him. He’s a real piece of work.”

“Was he... actually here just for a chance to laugh at you?”

“Yup.”

“Ah.”

They stood in silence. Needlenose fidgeted. Each wanted to make the first move towards each other, but neither were sure how to begin the niceties of mutually testing the waters. It was Horri-Bull who broke the silence.

“Thanks for keeping your word.”

Needlenose beamed at him, the warmth in his spark returning for a moment. “Like I said, of course. I’m not going to string you along.”

“You’d _better_ not,” Horri-Bull said, but the implied threat was transparently half-sparked.

Needlenose unsubspaced the ID card and held it out between two fingers to Horri-Bull. Horri-Bull took it from his hand and turned it over, examining it. “All you have to do is download it and the security drones at the entrance will let you in,” Needlenose explained. He was registered as a designer in the exhibition roster so his access to the exhibition was permanent. He didn’t need an ID card. “The guest code will expire after today. It’s automatic, I can’t do anything about that.”

“Got’cha,” Horri-Bull said.

He transformed a nicked-up panel on his broad midsection back and slid the card into the dataslot port it revealed with one thumb. The panel clicked back into place over it. Needlenose beckoned for Horri-Bull to follow him.

Horri-Bull did.

The entranceway itself gleamed in the sunlight as they walked through it. Intricate patterns spiraled out on the tiles in the Triaxian style, full of interwoven curves of bright colors and inlaid etchings. There wasn’t a rigid line to be found. The entrance’s overhead arch took a matching approach, the metal twisted into flowing metallic contours like a wave frozen in the highest swell of its motion.

The security drones scanned him first, then Horri-Bull before they let them through.

Under his mask Needlenose wrinkled his nose. He had originally attributed it to the grimmy fuel depot they had first met in, but he was starting to realize even in the cleanliness of the exhibition, Horri-Bull... smelled. Mildly. He stank like a mech who had taken a dip in a corroded oil field or hadn’t seen the inside of a washrack in a week. Since they were walking side-by-side, their fields close enough to brush, his scent hit Needlenose’s olfactory sensors full on and made him consider recalibrating them. It wasn’t _that_ disagreeable as far as odors went, being a mixture of asphalt, street grit, burnt grease, and oiled copper, all inoffensive odors that commonly clung to people who spent hours on end at demolition jobs and building sites, but it was—noticeable.

That was the word for it, _noticeable_.

He supposed hygiene could be a lower priority on his budget than fuelling or recharging for Horri-Bull. That, or Horri-Bull wasn’t too fond of the washracks.

With his feet on the table and his chair tipped to balance on its back legs, Sunbeam was playing on his handheld video game when Needlenose and Horri-Bull arrived at Needlenose’s display booth.

The squat purple and red minibot gave them a friendly wave, the oversized kibble for the chamber of his alt mode’s barrel encasing his arm turning the welcoming motion into a precarious balancing act to avoid the chair from falling over or Sunbeam losing his grip on the video game. “This your new buddy, Needlenose?”

Needlenose coughed into his fist. “Yeah, sure, fine. I’m just showing him around for the day. I appreciate you agreeing to keep an optic on things here for me.”

He pointed at Sunbeam. “Horri-Bull, this is Sunbeam.” His purple finger swivelled around to point at Horri-Bull. “Sunbeam, Horri-Bull.” As an afterthought, because he was getting an inkling for how Horri-Bull operated towards strangers, Needlenose added absent-mindedly. “I’d appreciate it if you weren’t a bin-head to him, Horri-Bull. He’s a friend, not just a co-worker.”

“Anytime, my main mech. I’m no kook. I don’t mind catching a dawn patrol,” Sunbeam chirped. That Needlenose had lent him the console he had his optics glued on to play video games on while he minded the display had something to do with that willingness. Sunbeam redirected his wide sea-glass green optics to Horri-Bull. “Nice to meet you. First time visitor?”

“Naw.” Horri-Bull shook his helm. “I’ve been here before—I helped build this place. Haven’t got to see it being used by people though.”

“You? One of the dudes who got this thing up?” Sunbeam eyed Horri-Bull’s dull finish skeptically. “You don’t look like an architect. You got dings.”

Horri-Bull glowered. “My boss’s the architect.”

Needlenose interjected. “Horri-Bull was one of the construction workers.”

Sunbeam’s field brightened. “Oh! That makes sense, since you’re so big! Tubular!”

“Fraggin’ whatever...”

Horri-Bull’s glower was mollified somewhat at the obvious praise of his strength, even if Sunbeam’s heavy accent and unending stream of out-of-town, laid-back slang got a visible ripple of puzzlement out of him.

“Anything happen while I was gone?” Needlenose checked.

Sunbeam shrugged, helm lazily rolling back on his shoulders. “Uh-huh. Mech. Got some foamies coming by, some frubes, no stacks or heavies. The display is ready for a party wave, but we’re in the lull. That’s how it goes, this early.”

Needlenose twitched a single aileron. “I know. Mmm. As long as we don’t go grubbing, things should be fine.” Not every day needed to have a show-stopping turn out for his booth. Sunbeam beeped cheerfully in agreement and went back to his video game.

Gesturing at the chips arranged on the table, Noodlenose spoke to Horri-Bull. “Do you want to see my designs? Or do you wanna see the other designers in the Rodion pavilion first?”

“We’re already here. Let’s see your scrap,” Horri-Bull said. “What’s a ‘Chic Chip?’”

Next to them, a victory chime played from the console in Sunbeam’s hands as he cleared a stage.

**////**

After they were done with Needlenose’s display and left Sunbeam in charge of it, they targeted the rest of the exhibition site. There were five pavilions to work through, one for each involved city, one for open-air installation projects, and one for collaborative projects by designers from all three cities. Needlenose had picked a time early in the day so the beginnings of the crowds of visitors were only starting to trickle in. They were three months into the exhibition’s five-month run so the rush wasn’t as fierce. He and Horri-Bull were relatively free to wander.

(And if a couple of the passersby sneaked judgemental frowns at the sight of a beastformer tromping along in a place for well-off citizens to socialize, Needlenose’s cutting stare down his nose at them from next to Horri-Bull’s elbow, daring them to try anything, made them hurry past.)

And Needlenose, against his own expectations, found himself enjoying it.

He _liked_ not just the chance to talk to somebody about his passions and have them treat it earnestly, like Horri-Bull was convinced Needlenose was actually an expert (which—he was, totally. Absolutely. If only everybody else was so ready to understand the truth of that!) —but he also was rapidly warming up even further to Horri-Bull’s company now that Horri-Bull had changed his mind about calling what Needlemade made ‘scrap.’

The mech was rude and stubborn and not that bright and smelled faintly like he stopped after every construction job to find a puddle of murk to roll in, but there was a refreshing _upfrontness_ to Horri-Bull. And despite his short fuse, he was a great listener when Needlenose had things to say. He didn’t make every conversation into a vehicle to talk about what _he_ wanted.

And he was _big_.

Needlenose was fascinated by the size of his frametype, even if he didn’t let it show.

Horri-Bull didn’t know jack about a lot of new devices being presented and Needlenose appreciated the holographic posters more than he did. But when Needlenose grabbed him by the hand and dragged him past the chairs and over to the life-size interior model design rooms, Horri-Bull knew enough to get scathing about Tallus of Triax’s room draped with imported metal meshes (“That blanket alone’s gotta cost three years of a wage like mine, and it looks like it’d tear in half if you tugged it too hard! Who’s going ‘ta want that?” he complained and Needlenose laughed along, neither of them paying much heed to Horri-Bull’s failure to pull his hand away) and crammed with yellow vases molded into elegant shapes, and couches encrusted with lavish amounts of golden gilt in the form of circuit board patterns.

Roken’s rows of modelled grand staircases and high-end elevators, with their exposed support beams and scaffolding, got a glare full of poison.

(Needlenose could understand that. Of middling popularity at the best, Senator Roken was outspoken about his Functionist beliefs.)

 **YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO** was engraved into the bare steel staircase steps like a brand.

“This is the kinda’ thing Megatron talks about. The upper class using the system, reducing us to _things_ where all that matters is how much work they can make us do. You know what Megatron says?” Horri-Bull demanded, gesturing indignantly at the display. Needlenose leaned closer in interest. Horri-Bull went on, resentment leaking through to the surface, “‘ _Value measured by output isn’t value at all. We’re more than tools._ ’” Horri-Bull was obviously repeating something he’d heard from somebody else, not something he’d come up with himself. “Makes sense to me. The people up on the top say it’s ‘bout following Primus’ big plan, but that’s a load of rust. It ain’t ‘bout that. They don’t think _they’re_ tools in a big plan. They think _we’re_ tools in their plans.”

The name finally stirred up a vague recollection.

“Isn’t Megatron that miner who got arrested because he criticized the government?”

Horri-Bull nodded. “They tried to ship him off to another mine somewhere, ‘cuz he was telling people the truth and the Senate didn’t want him to lead us, but he’s back now!” He thumped the purple symbol on his shoulder with a fist. “This is his symbol. We’re gonna change how stuff like the status quo works on Cybertron.”

Needlenose was almost jealous of the fierce certainty the other mech showed in his cause.

“He sounds inspiring.”

“‘Course he _is_.”

“I don’t know much about him. I think the status quo could use some changing, so it sounds like your group has the right idea,” Needlenose mused.

“You’d do well with us. You want to change the world too, not just sit around and wait around for somebody else to do the job for ‘ya,” Horri-Bull remarked. “That’s cool.”

Wings slanting upward, Needlenose snorted. “Hey now, I don’t want to get arrested like Megatron did! Jail cells sound so cramped.”

After they skipped past the display set of bright polka-dotted pink cooking utensils by Boltax of Iacon, they paused in their progress through the Iacon pavilion for Needlenose to jeer at Atomizer’s—another one of the interior designers from Iacon—uninspirated decoration choices.

Needlenose hadn’t met the mech more than once or twice, but he disdained Atomizer’s style as inferior to Needlenose’s own style and he relished the opening to tell Horri-Bull, his newfound audience, at length, why Atomizer’s lack of innovation was boring, his grasp of distributing the visual weight of a design utterly lopsided, and his gaudy aesthetic tastes were an affront to design as a discipline and a stain on the face of the fashion industry. Horri-Bull had no clue who Atomizer was, but he was more than pleased to join in on the verbal sneering, especially when his companion was so blatantly petty about it. They made a sport of it.

Time slipped away, faster than it should have. They talked together for hours. The sun climbed up towards its apex in the sky.

Horri-Bull and Needlenose completed one circle of the whole exhibition site.

Strangely, Needlenose was reluctant to end the tour.

He’d made his case and shared his views, and Horri-Bull had been sold on it. Surely, that was enough. Soon Needlenose would need to return and take over the task of minding the display from Sunbeam. But ‘soon’ wasn’t ‘right now.’ So he put it off. They fumbled around and after Needlenose made an assortment of excuses, they wound up completing a second circle of the exhibition.

The pair didn’t spend much of it looking at the displays.

The western entranceway came back into view and its shadow passed over their helms. Back at the spot where they had started, they drew to a halt. Needlenose’s wings set themselves to an angle perfectly horizontal to the ground.

“I had a great time today,” Needlenose blurted out.

“Same here. This was more fun than I’d thought it’d be.” Horri-Bull scratched the back of his helm and followed it up with an expression of open appreciation on such an usually-sour face whose mechanisms were so obviously unaccustomed to the specific sequence of physical contortions and slanting of the optics that doing that required it made Needlenose feel he was witnessing something rare and that made him glad. Or flushed, he wasn’t sure which. “Beats hanging out with Apeface ‘n watching him be bad at playin’ darts any day.”

“Heh. Was that your plan if I didn’t show up?”

“That, or hitting the dive bar next to Hightower’s place.”

Needlenose flashed a smile with his optics in a way he fancied to be winning. “Why, should I apologize for pulling you away from such riveting pastimes like that?”

“Needlenose, you’re being a smartaft. You’re lucky I’m gonna let you get away with it scot free,” Horri-Bull leaned over and flicked him in the chassis, right between the slots for the vents, but it was done lightly and he didn’t make any dents. “I wouldn’t mind meetin’ up with you like this again,” Horri-Bull said. “To talk. Even after the exhibition’s over. Wanna keep in touch?”

Though he shimmered down his eagerness, Needlenose didn’t think twice in giving Horri-Bull a sharp, quick nod.

“ _Yes_ , I’d like that. What’s your comm frequency?”

**Author's Note:**

> Since the comics present Needlenose as coming from what seemed to me to be a ‘comfortably middle class’ background, while beastformers like Horri-Bull are usually linked to disposables and monoformers in the same breath in terms of being a socially disadvantaged ‘lower class’ pre-war, what kind of situation they could have even met in that led to them becoming friends at all, much less falling in love with each other? I couldn’t help but be curious.
> 
> I've made a dreamwidth [account](https://trajectorion.dreamwidth.org/profile) as a place to dump my fic notes. Feel free to check it out, though there's not much there yet.


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